CIAO FOR NOW-HITTING THE ROAD AGAIN

Hello my friends!! It’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to blog and in a few days you will be seeing much more from Graffiti Gossip. I am heading off on a whirlwind Chow National tour!! First to our CCCI National Specialty show in Sacramento, California for a week of catching up with old and new chow friends.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with a National Specialty, its a once a year “convention” of sorts, where Chow Chow enthusiasts from all corners of the US , Canada, and various other countries meet to show their dogs, go to educational seminars and enjoy one another’s company. It’s a week long event including other shows in the mix.

Then off to Italy for their Chow National where I will meet up with one of the judges of the show…. our wonderful from Thailand, Ekarat Sangkunakup, who so very kindly surprised me by hosting my plane ticket and stay in Italy for a week!!! Could you hear my jaw drop when he told me???? I will do a separate post about that trip in a few days!!! I leave for Italy, 4 days after we return from Sacremento

So yesterday I posted a photo on Facebook of this delicIous bracelet which I made for myself to wear to the Chow events and had such a wonderful reception to it (thank you peeps!) and multiple requests to purchase something similar. Before I could make any commitments I first needed to get back to the store to see if any of these high quality hinged braclet cuffs were left….thank goodness there were a handful (pardon the pun) and I grabbed them all!!

This bracelet is pretty amazing with 3 hand sculpted chows and a garden scene encompassing the entire piece in my FAUX Ivory method, using professional quality polymer clay as my medium. The cuff has a REALLY strong hinge and is slightly oval in shape which makes it ultra comfie to wear as well as very secure on the wrist. The gunmetal finish on the bracelet really gives it a rich finish and nice weight. A labor of love. as this took longer than most of my 250.00 necklaces to make yet are PRICED AT ONLY $185.00 USD plus postage…One of my fave pieces so far!!

I wanted to make sure my blog readers didn’t miss out on this chance, so if you are interested in reserving your custom “Ivory Artifact” bracelet, just let me know at[email protected]

I will not be taking deposits until I get back from Italy the end of April when I will start right away fulfilling orders. Each takes about 5 full days to complete so I will send an invoice as I start each customers special bracelet

For those of you who aren’t Chow fanatics and wondering if I will ever do more pandas and floral pieces again…thank you for your patience…it will be rewarded 10 fold with a Trunk show in late spring full of luscious new designs for the summer season. Above and below are a couple of examples of some hot designs which will be available the end of this month.

STAY TUNED TO THE BLOG NEXT WEEK FOR UPDATES FROM SONOMA WINE COUNTRY AND SACRAMENTO AND THE DRIVE DOWN THROUGH SOUTHERN OREGON AND MT. SHASTA…SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!

CLICK LINKS BELOW

We do love going to markets on our vacations whether it be food, handcrafted goods or supplies. We love them all. The past few days we have been scoping out the markets and shops here, price comparing and bartering just a bit to get a feel for where we can get the best quality […]

What a fun day this was!!! Steve rented a Honda scooter for 20ish for the full day and we headed out of the city to one of the spectacular waterfalls which also was adjacent to the Moonbear Rescue and a new butterfly park. I was able to catch a few photos enroute on this 15 […]

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We do work up an appetite when we travel, averaging 8 miles a day on foot, dodging traffic, motorbikes etc and tend to eat well. Usually breakfast and a late lunch is all we eat but we FEAST during those two meals. We ended up doing a nighttime street food private tour with our […]

This village about 30 minutes outside of Hanoi city was a perfect choice to get a good look into local life and the craftsmanship of the villagers with not a tourist in sight…other than steve and myself. Many photos are below in a slideshow with a few highlighted on the blog with descriptions My mom […]

Yesterday as the taxi drove us in from the airport to out hotel we were reminded of all the reasons we had return to this wonderful city and greeted with many new sights since our trip 10 years ago. One being this jaw dropping mural that lined a very long span of the highway. I […]

What a whirlwind marathon this day has been…actually dayS if you count the timezone change as it is now Tuesday mid morning as I write to you flying over Shanghai China enroute to Hanoi Vietnam….almost a day ahead of the U.S. The 24 hours of flying with a couple of short layovers began in […]

Hello my friends, the trip back to Minnesota was a real whirlwind but the timing couldn’t be better to be there for my new grandson Milo’s birthday. I arrived on the 10th, Liz went into labor on her due date the 13th and Milo was born the next day January 14th, 2015. 7 lbs 5 […]